"I call it a system." Unauthorized Migrants' Understandings of
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IJCJ&SD 10(3) 2021 ISSN 2202-8005
“I call it a system.” Unauthorized Migrants’ Understandings of the
Long Reach of Dutch Internal Migration Controls
Mieke Kox and Richard Staring
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands
Abstract
We draw on the concept of deportability to show how unauthorized migrants who (used to)
live in the Netherlands perceive and experience Dutch internal-control mechanisms. We first
conclude that these migrants’ deportability has serious legal, social, and existential effects on
them, which they feel long after their return or deportation to their home country. Second,
we state that unauthorized migrants evaluate the Dutch internal-control mechanisms as “one
system” in which they distinguish three important, interlinked layers, consisting of (1)
divergent actors, (2) laws and policies inside and outside the migration control domains
located within (3) different geographies. This implies that individual nation-states, through
their internal control mechanisms, also contribute to the externalization of migration control
at a supranational level. We conclude that the state’s internal migration controls bring about
immobility not only in the countries of settlement but also in the transit and home countries.
Keywords
Multilayered bordering practices; deportability; migration control; unauthorized migrants;
internal migration control; externalization.
Please cite this article as:
Kox M and Staring R (2021) “I call it a system.” Unauthorized migrants’ understandings of the long reach
of Dutch internal migration controls. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. 10(3):
87-100. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.2043
Except where otherwise noted, content in this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International Licence. As an open access journal, articles are free to use with proper attribution.
ISSN: 2202-8005
© The Author(s) 2021Mieke Kox, Richard Staring: Unauthorized Migrants’ Understandings of the Long Reach of Dutch Internal Migration Controls
Introduction
Yeah. I run from Ivory Coast because of the war and because of my opinion on the ones in
power in that time. Now, plenty of things have changed . . . I have run for more than 10 years,
12 years from my country and I think that it is now time to go home. Because now, I feel that
I am wasting my time here in the Netherlands. I don’t have my legal status here. I still continue
to be in a freedom-restricted location. And you want to know something about this? This
looks like another prison for me . . . The problem I face for more than four years now is the
embassy. They tell me that they have a rule: “Ibo, you are intelligent. You used to work in
some company where you do wood. You used to plant wood” . . . And sometimes they send
this wood to a foreign country . . . Can you send wood to another country, if they don’t give
you all the papers that are required to send it? . . . It is the same thing. “We recognize you. You
are from the Ivory Coast. We call around in the country but we don’t see papers of you. We
cannot sign some paper for you. It is difficult. If we do like that, it will destroy our work as
administrators. It is not possible.” Thus, because of the law in the Ivory Coast, they cannot
sign the papers. And because of the Dutch law, the Netherlands cannot give me my papers. I
am between two laws, that is my big problem now . . . I call it a system. It is a system.
This quote is by Ibo from the Ivory Coast, who arrived in the early 2000s in the Netherlands to seek asylum.
His request was rejected, after which he saw himself confronted with what he calls “some difficult
situations.” During his interviews, he reflects on a wide range of what Albrecht (2002) and Doomernik and
Jandl (2008) have labeled “internal migration-control mechanisms” and that other scholars situate in the
context of bordering practices (Aliverti, Milivojevic, and Weber 2019; Newman 2006). These internal
migration-control mechanisms are defined as those policies and practices that are enacted within the
controlling nation-state and aimed at the discouragement of unauthorized residency and the return or
deportation of unauthorized migrants (Albrecht 2002). These internal controls are posited next to external
migration controls that specifically deal with the intensified closing, fortifying, and policing of the
territorial lines of nation-states or supranational entities, such as the European Union (EU), to prevent
unauthorized entry. Both forms of control may consist of assemblages of technologies, laws, institutions,
representations, discourses, or practices that are used in and beyond border areas (Genç, Heck, and Hess
2018).
Our broader ethnographic research among migrants living without legal status in the Netherlands shows
that the experiences and meanings that Ibo presents us are not restricted to a single, isolated unauthorized
migrant. Many other unauthorized migrants agreed on this tangle of internal migration controls, which,
according to them, was not only hard to permeate but also affected multiple domains in their everyday
lives, from the moment they started considering migration to their stay in the Netherlands and until long
after their return or deportation. These migrants’ lived experiences are directly related to Western nation-
states’ intentions to govern through migration controls, meaning that they strictly select who is allowed to
reside on the state’s territory and exclude or ban the unwanted others (Bosworth and Guild 2008). In
recent decades, states have strengthened their internal control mechanisms (Aas 2011; Aas and Bosworth
2013) and moved their borders in different directions (Guiraudon and Lahav 2000; Lavenax 2006; Staring
and Van Swaaningen 2021; Weber 2006) to increase capacity and effectiveness. These developments have
brought about a multilayered structure in the Dutch internal-control system, often referred to as a
multilayered border regime (cf. van der Woude and Staring 2021 [this issue]).
We draw on the concept of “deportability” as the omnipresent awareness of the possibility of being
deported from the “space of the nation-state” (De Genova 2002: 439) to unpack these layers of the internal
border regime from the perspective of unauthorized migrants (who used to be) in the Netherlands. After
elaboration of the theoretical concepts and the method, we illustrate how these internal migration controls
interact with the daily lives of unauthorized migrants and shape their experiences while living in the
Netherlands and after return or deportation. Untangling internal migration controls not only illustrates
how unauthorized migrants experience these different interlinked layers of the Dutch internal-control
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IJCJSD 10(3) 2021Mieke Kox, Richard Staring: Unauthorized Migrants’ Understandings of the Long Reach of Dutch Internal Migration Controls
system but also reveals that the migrants themselves experience even more layers of control than often
assumed in the theoretical debate on (governing through) migration controls. This can be seen particularly
after the migrants’ return or deportation to their home countries, where they are still being confronted
with the legal, social, and existential consequences of internal migration controls practiced thousands of
miles away. We argue that the internal migration management of an individual nation-state like the
Netherlands, due to its multilayered character, is directly linked and has similar consequences to external
migration-control management. This not only implies that individual nation-states, through their internal
control mechanisms, also contribute to the externalization of migration control at a supranational level
but also shows that the state’s approach brings about immobility in home, transit, and destination
countries, something that raises serious questions over the current controlling approach.
Internal Migration Controls, Deportability, and the Netherlands
The multilayered bordering regime is the result of different, related developments that have brought about
a proliferation of border sites, meaning that borders are no longer solely situated at states’ territorial lines
but have become invisible and are located everywhere and nowhere (Balibar 2002). On the one hand, this
refers to the externalization of borders or “remote controls” (Zolberg quoted in FitzGerald 2020), meaning
that geographical borders are functionally or virtually moved outwards and detached from a state’s
territorial border (Weber 2006). Based on unilateral, bilateral or multilateral agreements, states
undertake extraterritorial actions to prevent immigrants’ unauthorized entry, effectuate unauthorized
migrants’ deportation policies, and strengthen external borders (Frelick, Kysel, and Podkul 2016). Using
externalization strategies, such as strict visa requirements, offshore detention camps, and outsourcing
border controls, migrants are being stopped and held in their home countries and (former) transit
countries (Staring and Van Swaaningen 2021).
Conversely, internal control mechanisms have been substantially changed, which extends their reach. For
instance, policing unauthorized migration and residency has shifted from the national level upwards to
the international, intergovernmental, and supranational level as states increasingly use (institutionalized)
collaboration (Guiraudon and Lahav 2000; Lavenax 2006). Another example refers to processes of
responsibilization, which have taken place both in crime control and with respect to migration control
(Staring and Van Swaaningen 2021). In this process of responsibilization, migration control has partially
moved from central, public state actors to private agencies, organizations, and individuals at the local level
or outside the direct realm of the state (Kox and Staring 2020; Lahav 1998; Weber 2013). Further, there is
an increased intertwinement between the criminal and migration domains: “crimmigration.” While this
trend also evokes counter processes that change the effects of crimmigration (Staring and Timmerman
2021), it expands states’ bordering strategies as administrative migration-law violations that may also be
sanctioned with criminal law(like) instruments (Stumpf 2006), and criminal offenses may have migratory
consequences (Chacón 2009). Finally, states increasingly use technical surveillance infrastructures and
digitalize their borders to facilitate deportation processes. Therefore, information has become a key factor
in controlling unauthorized migrants; this has also relocated migration control away from a state’s
territorial borders to inside its territory (Broeders 2009). This brief overview shows the layered structure
of internal control regimes in terms of localities, actors, policy domains, and tools and how these
mechanisms, through the notion of deportability, dominate migrants’ daily lives.
The effect of internal control mechanisms on unauthorized migrants’ everyday lives has been discussed in
the context of deportability—that is, the unauthorized migrants’ vulnerability caused by the ever-present
risk of being deported and the (possible) accompanying encounters with everyday forms of exclusion,
surveillance, and repression (De Genova 2002). Coutin (2000: 40) argued that the lack of legal status may
be irrelevant for most unauthorized migrants’ everyday activities but that their “legal reality is
superimposed on daily life” (see also De Genova 2002). It produces a “deeply interiorised mode of being”
(De Genova and Peutz 2010: 14) caused by internal migration controls. This is represented by their
exclusion from the formal labor and housing market, complicated access to health care, difficult social
relations, and lack of perspective for the future (Coutin 2000; De Genova 2002). Kox, Boone, and Staring
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IJCJSD 10(3) 2021Mieke Kox, Richard Staring: Unauthorized Migrants’ Understandings of the Long Reach of Dutch Internal Migration Controls
(2020) showed that the lack of legal status might bring about all kinds of “pains of being unauthorized.”
This may result in so-called “migrant struggles,” which refer to the process whereby migrants “openly
challenge defeat, escape or trouble the dominant politics of mobility” as well as their “daily strategies,
refusals and resistances through which migrants enact their (contested) presence” (Casas-Cortes et al.
2015: 80). Some migrants are nondeportable, as the receiving state is not able to actually arrange the
necessary documents (cf. Leerkes and Kox 2016). They may use the extra opportunities to circumvent
internal controls (Fabini 2019), but this nondeportability does not provide them with any extra rights
during their unauthorized stay.
These divergent internal migration-control mechanisms and the accompanying deportability are, to a
greater or lesser extent, applicable to many Western countries that are uncomfortable with irregular
migration flows (cf. Leerkes and Van Houte 2020). This also applies to the Netherlands, where this study
is situated. Here, the Dutch label of a relatively open and tolerant country has made way for a much harsher
social reality characterized by restrictive admission policies, the increased exclusion of unauthorized
migrants, and the extended capacity of and urgent need for migration controls (Engbersen, Van San and
Leerkes 2006). For instance, the Dutch authorities have extended their policies of identification by
implementing the Extended Identification Act [Wet op de Uitgebreide Identificatieplicht], which requires
all persons over 14 to show valid proof of identification upon request by the police or other designated
officers. This extension also concerns the increased use of biometric features—iris scans, fingerprints, or
digital facial images—to facilitate the surveillance, identification, and deportation of unauthorized
migrants from the Netherlands (Broeders 2009). Further, the Dutch authorities introduced the so-called
Linking Act [Koppelingswet] in 1998, which ensures that only migrants with valid residence permits can
access the formal labor and housing markets, social security benefits, and public services (van der Leun
2003). Due to the linking of residence status with these public and semipublic services, unauthorized
migrants are only eligible for essential health care; legal aid; and until the age of 18, education (Hintjens,
Siegmann, and Staring 2020). This Linking Act is added to other measures that strengthen unauthorized
migrants’ exclusion from society, such as the introduction of administrative fines for employers of
unauthorized migrants and the lack of subsidy for local authorities for providing shelter to homeless
unauthorized migrants (Van Meeteren 2014). Finally, the Dutch authorities implemented a new Aliens Act
in 2001. Unauthorized residency is not criminalized in this act, but it provides more opportunities to stop,
detain, and deport unauthorized migrants on the basis of a reasonable suspicion of unauthorized
residence. Although the implementation of the Return Directive in 2011 includes safeguards for
immigration detention of unauthorized migrants (Klaassen and Rodrigues 2021), the increased detention
opportunities have also been criticized for the lack of proper individual assessment before detention
(Busser, Oosterhuis and Strik 2019). While the effects of this exclusion and control are determined by the
everyday interactions between border officers and unauthorized migrants (van der Woude and van der
Leun 2017) and the embeddedness of unauthorized migrants in supportive social networks, studies on
unauthorized migrants in the Netherlands show that it has become increasingly difficult and painful to
survive in the Netherlands without a residence permit (Kox, Boone, and Staring 2020).
Methodology1
We show here how unauthorized migrants experience and give meaning to the wide range of internal
border-control practices in their everyday lives in the Netherlands or their home country following
deportation or return. We focus on internal border controls, whose outcomes, as we show, are still felt
after return and deportation. We are inspired by our work on unauthorized migrants over the years, but
this contribution is grounded in multisite ethnographic fieldwork with 105 unauthorized migrants. This
fieldwork was part of the first author’s PhD research on unauthorized migrants’ understandings of
migration control. In this context, she followed 45 unauthorized migrants between March 2015 and May
2018, observing them in their everyday lives and during their interactions with controlling institutions.
The study involved repeatedly interviewing or informally talking to migrants and having frequent contact
by phone or WhatsApp. The number of contacts varied from three to over 20 times. Kox also interviewed,
informally spoke to, or observed another 60 unauthorized migrants who wanted to be involved in the
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research but only at one moment in time. The respondents were mainly based in the Netherlands but also
included migrants who were deported or returned from the Netherlands to Suriname (10), Nigeria (6),
and Guyana (1). Kox also pragmatically observed sites, actions, and state actors within the Dutch border
regime, such as the police (arrests and interrogations), the Repatriation and Departure Service (DT&V,
return counseling meetings), and deportations, to better understand and question the respondents’
experiences.
Given the assumed differences between unauthorized migrants (Burgers and Engbersen 1999), Kox tried
to create a diverse group in terms of age, gender, country of origin, length of stay in the Netherlands,
migration motive, and family situation. She recruited unauthorized migrants with different backgrounds
at different locations and stages of their unauthorized residency, including those who were living out of
sight of the authorities, just being arrested by the police, living at freedom-restricted (family) locations
aimed at removal, or staying in immigration detention centers. She made contact with these migrants
through support organizations, migration institutions, and the snowballing method. This resulted in a
heterogeneous research group that may, to some extent, be considered exceptional, as many migrants
never reach their European destination country. Simultaneously, there are also migrants who never
aspired to cross the European borders but ended up, for different reasons, in Europe (Snel, Bilgili, and
Staring 2020).
In all interactions during the fieldwork, unauthorized migrants could recall their situation in the country
of origin and their migration journey but also discussed their everyday lives, experiences with migration
controls, and visions of their futures. Given the vulnerability of the research group, they were provided an
information sheet and repeatedly reassured that they could stop their participation in the research
whenever they wanted without further clarification. While some respondents decided to limit their
participation to a single meeting as they considered it too emotional to discuss their experiences and
existential uncertainties, most were very grateful to be given a voice. For some, it seemed even quite
therapeutic to have someone listen to their life stories in the context of their unauthorized residency.
Returned and deported migrants even felt honored that someone from the Netherlands was visiting them
so they could show to their current social environment to still have close friends there. This approach and
the open attitude of these migrants enabled Kox to follow them and observe the consequences of current
control practices over time. Field notes were kept of all observations and informal conversations, while
interviews were recorded and literally transcribed, and all quotations were translated into English. The
data were all analyzed in qualitative data analysis software, ATLAS.ti, using thematic and open-coding
techniques for discovering the data and pattern analysis to find meaningful linkages across the full dataset
(Saldaña 2016: 235).
Deportability in the Netherlands: Confrontations with a Multilayered System
Dealing with the presence of internal migration controls is an everyday reality for unauthorized migrants
given its influence on all domains of their daily lives (cf. Pickering and Weber 2006) and the state of
deportability it brings (cf. De Genova 2002).2 These control mechanisms deprive them of health and secure
living conditions, limit their social and geographical mobility, and affect their feelings of belonging (Kox,
Boone, and Staring 2020). These controls also have emotional effects (cf. Paasi 2011), as in the story of
Joseph, an African asylum-seeker whose claim has repeatedly been rejected and who believes that the
Dutch authorities are playing a psychological game by excluding unauthorized migrants from
comprehensive support and subjecting them to internal controls:
From there, they [immigration authorities] just starting and asking . . . They asked me a lot of
questions, really, they asked me a lot of questions about my asylum. I am staying in
Amsterdam, I just am here. I just explained because I was used to sleeping in the park, you
know. I was sleeping in the park, begging on the street you know. It was a hard time. Then
from there, they didn’t tell me anything. Then I go, go to [immigration] detention . . . And eh
every month, the first of every month, you have to go to meet the people they call DT&V
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IJCJSD 10(3) 2021Mieke Kox, Richard Staring: Unauthorized Migrants’ Understandings of the Long Reach of Dutch Internal Migration Controls
[Repatriation and Departure Service]. And those people are kind of eh . . . I don’t know how I
can explain this, it is a kind of psychological thing so . . . It is . . . When they are coming to you,
the only things they ask you is that you leave the country. No comments, just that . . . For me,
honestly, I grew up in a war country. I grew up in war. I have seen war in my lifetime, so for
me . . . I can say: it is better to be in the war than to let somebody play with you psychologically.
Because, in the war, the things I’ve experienced—if some can shoot you, can kill you and then
it is finished. But their psychology is . . . is a kind of . . . it is more dangerous because they don’t
kill you.
After six months, the man was released from detention as he could not be deported. Like other respondents
who were ambiguous or explicitly negative toward return, he suffered from severe pains that are
inherently linked to his subjection to migration controls and, in his view, the psychological game the Dutch
authorities play.3 For some, this resulted in trauma, something that is often found among unauthorized
migrants and asylum seekers in particular (Bäärnhielm et al. 2017).
Another profound emotion is the constant fear of deportation, something that is part of, or the intention
behind, the current system, according to several respondents. Amado, a Filipino domestic worker who
lived with his wife and son in an apartment and who had a relatively vibrant social life within his ethnic
community, explained how he is hampered by this fear:
Every time you get out of your house, you are aware. You just always think you know: “Maybe
it is my time now.” So, you know, you are a bit worried all the time. Especially because I wasn’t
ready and did not yet have the money to go back to the Philippines. That is . . . the fear is there
every time I go out of the house.
Respondents said they were afraid that the police or other officers would stop them and discover that they
do not have a valid legal status to remain in the country. Then, in line with the Aliens Act, they may be
detained in an immigration detention center and eventually deported to their home country. Most
respondents fear this deportation for different reasons. Some, mainly rejected asylum-seekers, are mainly
concerned with security in their home country, while others point to their strong social ties or greater
opportunities to make a living in the Netherlands compared to their home country. Others fear that the
legal consequences of the return directives after deportation would prevent them from returning to the
Netherlands or another EU country. Amodo, for instance, wants to earn a specific amount of money to
enable him to build a life in his home country, something that has become more complicated due to the
exclusion of the labor market and the administrative fines for employers. This shows how internal controls
can contribute to migrants’ reluctance to return to their home country despite the wide range of control
mechanisms they are confronted with.
Finally, these migrants’ deportability is being fed by the layered structure of the Dutch internal-control
system in terms of the divergent actors and institutions involved, the increased use of nonmigration policy
domains, and the different localities in which the effects of these controls are experienced. As we illustrate
below, these three layers are interlinked with and strengthen each other, which contributes to migrants’
experiences of subjection to an encompassing control system.
The First Layer: Divergent Controlling Actors
First, respondents experience the different state and non-state actors in the control system. They refer to
state actors, such as the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, which decides upon legalization; the
(immigration) police who control them; the Repatriation and Departure Service, which holds return
meetings with unauthorized migrants; and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee (KMar), which might
escort unauthorized migrants during their deportation. In line with the aforementioned trend of
responsibilization, respondents highlight the controlling role of non-state actors. For instance,
respondents searching for work recount that employers ask for their ID upon recruitment, something that
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has limited their opportunities for work and pushed them into the informal economy. Others point to the
role of relatives, acquaintances, or unknown others who have betrayed them to the police. Further, as Kox
and Staring (2020) discuss in more detail, rejected asylum-seekers sometimes doubt whether they can still
trust those organizations that provide support to unauthorized migrants, given their focus on selection,
exclusion, and increased return. Some respondents explicitly state that they consider these non-state
actors as part of the migration control system; this also applies to lawyers, the International Organization
for Migration (IOM), the Refugee Council, and airlines. The latter, implicitly, is evident during the
observation of the deportation of Selahattin, a Turkish man who tried to use the Dutch authorities’
dependency on the airline to hinder his deportation. Airlines not only have to control passengers’
documents upon departure but are also used to deport unauthorized migrants (cf. Walters 2018).4 During
these flights, the captain is responsible for the passengers on board, including the deportee. Selahattin
seemed aware of this. He was quiet during the entire deportation process until the moment when—
restrained in a body cuff and escorted by the KMar—he entered the Turkish Airlines plane. Once on board,
he tried to shout, bite, escape the grip of his escorts, and draw attention to his situation. Extra escorts
entered the plane to oppose this firm resistance. When passengers noticed this struggle, they asked the
escorts what was happening and were told that it was better for the migrant to return home. Kox then had
to leave the plane as she was not flying to Turkey herself. By then, Selahattin was exhausted and could no
longer resist. However, the Belgian flight captain decided to cancel the deportation as he feared unrest
during the flight. After another stay in immigration detention, Selahattin was released in the Netherlands.
This shows that the inclusion of controlling, non-state actors hampers unauthorized residency and, at the
same time, also offers unauthorized migrants opportunities to fight the system. These interactions with
state and non-state actors can also result in upsetting and traumatic experiences, as described above, in
migrants’ desperate attempts to prevent being deported “back home.”
Further, respondents—mainly rejected asylum-seekers—mentioned the Dutch authorities’ use of
digitalized actors to expand the reach of their control, especially in their use of fingerprinting. Upon arrival
in the EU, or once unauthorized migrants are apprehended within the EU, they were forced to provide
fingerprints, which are registered on several databases to see whether they had been in another Schengen
member-state before or whether they were registered criminals. Respondents say that these fingerprints
hamper their geographical mobility as they will be deported to the Netherlands if they are detected in
another European country on the basis of the Dublin Convention (cf. Picozza 2017).5 A rejected asylum-
seeker explained, “Since they took my fingerprints, I cannot go anywhere.” He tried to apply for asylum in
other European countries following his rejection in the Netherlands but was deported back there. He is
afraid to return home given the ongoing political unrest in his origin country but realizes that it will be
difficult to return to the Netherlands again due to his registered fingerprints that were taken when
entering Europe for the first time. Therefore, he, like other respondents, opted for “safety first” and decided
to continue his unauthorized residency.
In doing so, these migrants challenge the Aliens Act, which is focusing on increasingly fast and austere
asylum procedures. However, these migrants decided not to take the risk of a “definite return” and
continued their unauthorized stay. It turns out that immobility or prolonged stay is one important and
unintended outcome of these measures.
The Second Layer: Policies and Laws Within and Above Migration Management
The layering of the Dutch internal-control system comes to the fore in the authorities’ use of different
policy domains to increase their legal opportunities to stop, detain, and deport migrants with no legal
status. While some respondents believe that the police will find a reason if they want to stop them, others
point to the inclusion of criminal laws in the migration domain, something that aligns with the
aforementioned trend of crimmigration. Yaro, from Ethiopia, explains:
You know khat? The green leaf? The Somalian, the Ethiopian, and the Kenyan, we eat it as a
normal thing . . . It is just a matter of enjoyment. I went to buy it in Amsterdam. When I came
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out of the shop, three or four people stepped in the light. They said, “Mister. Mister, stop!” . . .
They ask, “Can I see your ID? Your ID. And can you open your jacket?” Then they said, “What
is this?” I said, “This is khat.” “You don’t know that khat is not allowed?” I said, “I didn’t know.”
. . . So, they seized it, blablabla and took me to the foreign police. There, they dropped the
charge, got me a lawyer and said, “Now you are free from the khat but now you are facing
being illegal in the country. It is an eh . . . two-stager; they had to criminalize me for buying
khat but then that charge was dropped and I faced the crime of illegality.
Staring (2014) argues that, with the criminalization of khat in 2013, the Dutch government created a
legitimate opportunity for the police to apprehend khat users—who happen to be a selective group of
migrants originating from the Horn of Africa, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. This implies that some
criminal laws intentionally or unintentionally target specific nationalities and, consequently, can be used
for controlling migration. Yaro’s story illustrates this as he was not prosecuted for the possession of khat
but did end up in immigration detention.
Respondents not only provided examples of the inclusion of criminal law in the migration domain but also
referred to the use of development aid policies to facilitate deportation (cf. Cassarino 2009). The inclusion
of these different policy domains within the control system has extended the latter’s reach and expanded
the number of actors. For instance, respondents argued that the Dutch authorities increasingly collaborate
with other nation-states to both prevent unauthorized entry and facilitate deportation. Some referred to
the migration partnerships introduced since 2005 between the EU and migration source countries (cf.
Billet 2010; Cassarino 2009), partnerships that entail migration source countries receiving development
aid, visa facilitation, or other incentives if they accept and provide the required travel documents for those
nationals whom the Dutch authorities want to deport. These collaborations are, thus, an extension of the
Dutch authorities’ deportation policies and actors. Several respondents were aware of these partnerships,
which increased the feeling of being subjected to a system. This also applies to Taner, a Burundian man
who left his home country due to the civil war. He believes that the Burundian president uses the
partnership money to supply his soldiers with weapons instead of strengthening the justice system in the
country. Taner explained:
We are refugees, we come to Europe for help. But those people, the rebels, the Burundi
president was a rebel, they kill people. And then they get money from the Netherlands for us.
The Dutch authorities say, “We have illegal migrants, so we will help you financially.” The
Burundi president signs and the Dutch pay. That’s corruption! . . . In Guinea as well, and in eh .
. . in Iraq, I don’t know exactly which countries, but I heard about the Congo too. Yes, they are
being paid, huge, very huge amounts. And the president . . . what do you think? He gets, like, a
million, but do you think he cares about me? No! They don’t care about me. The money, that’s
important.
Some respondents said they felt powerless due to the increased collaboration of the Dutch authorities with
others included in the control system, against whom the migrants cannot compete due to the merger of
different laws and policies within the migration control domain. Simultaneously, the Dutch authorities—
and the EU—face complications in ending such partnerships, given the reluctance of migration source
countries to accept their own nationals. This provides respondents with the opportunity to ask the
representatives of their home country to refuse the provision of a travel document.
Finally, respondents point to the inclusion of other policies and laws in the control system. For instance,
as we illustrate later in more detail, they found that current civic integration policies select who deserves
admission and who should be held in the home country (cf. Bonjour 2010). Further, they refer to the
inclusion of social policies in the domain of labor, housing, and family affairs (cf. Bowling and Westenra
2020; Hiah and Staring 2016). The extension of the migration control domain with these other legal
domains complicates living without legal status in the Netherlands and causes immobility in the migrants’
home countries. A substantial number of respondents question whether such an encompassing,
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criminalizing system is needed, as they are not criminals but simply lack the legal documents entitling
them to remain in or migrate to the Netherlands.
The Third Layer: Dutch Internal-Control Mechanisms Contributing to the EU’s Externalized Control
Finally, the effects of internal control mechanisms are not only felt by respondents living in the
Netherlands. These internal controls also influence these migrants’ daily lives in their home countries after
deportation or voluntary return. The different localities where these mechanisms perpetuate add to the
image of an interlinked, layered structure of Dutch internal migration control, which the migrants perceive
as a system.
Respondents were confronted with the stigma of being deported, meaning that, in their destination
country, they are not considered full citizens and are to some extent excluded from fully participating in
society. This may result in feelings of loss (cf. Peutz 2010). This can be seen in the narrative of Jeffrey, a
deported Surinamese man. In the early 1990s, he left his job at Paramaribo airport after a traumatizing
plane crash and migrated to the Netherlands, where he worked unauthorized for several years before he
was arrested, detained for 2.5 months, and deported given his lack of legal status. After his deportation,
Jeffrey arrived at the airport with two plastic bags and, like other Surinamese deportees, pretended to be
on holiday, as he felt ashamed of his former unauthorized residency. He was aware of the powerful stigma
that rests on deportees who are considered failures or criminals. However, he explained:
They are bullying me. I could get into a fight with someone because it is so annoying. “They
have posted him. The Netherlands have posted him,” that’s what they say. That it just
annoying someone, right? I no longer go out in the evenings to avoid meeting anyone. Now, it
has become quiet . . . It really hurts me; I am still really sad that I had to leave my country [the
Netherlands].
Jeffrey continues to describe how he eschews certain places or people, thereby showing how he had
already internalized his label as an outcast (cf. McDowell and Wonders 2010). After deportation, he
continued feeling miserable and developed an alcohol addiction, something he denies later in the
interview. His legal and social exclusion in the Netherlands was socially perpetuated during his stay back
home in Suriname, as his former neighbors and friends believed that deportees do not rightfully belong in
their country either—Jeffrey also struggled with this. He preferred to be in the Netherlands, given the
opportunities to work and the presence of legally residing families, especially as he could not live up to his
wife’s expectations in Suriname. This illustrates how bordering practices and the accompanying
deportability not only have enormous long-term legal and social consequences for deportees but also
seriously influence their mental and physical health even long after deportation. Dingeman-Cerda and
Coutin (2012) believe that such unwanted deportations bring about not only individual suffering but also
what they call “social suffering,” which affects society as a whole, at least in the Salvadorian context.6
Respondents also account for the immobility they face in their home country as the outcome of Dutch
internal-control mechanisms. Many deportees and returnees considered a return to the Netherlands as a
solution for their ongoing economic or social problems in their home country. A lack of opportunities in
the labor market, social exclusion, and feelings of not belonging in their home country all lead to cyclical
migration, where these migrants attempt to travel back and forth within their transnational network. As
they have obtained migration experience and built transnational ties, migration has become a more real
and closer solution to them (cf. Schuster and Majidi 2013). However, their previous subjection to internal
migration controls contributed to their immobility post-return. For instance, respondents in both Nigeria
and Suriname were, again, considering migration to the Netherlands, as this felt more like their home
country than their actual country of origin given their social and cultural ties there, the length of their
residency, or other forms of connection. However, migration to the Netherlands or another European
country after deportation has become more complicated due to the entry bans and the pronouncement of
undesirability that the EU and the Netherlands have introduced and that are registered in digital
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databases.7 This prevents further migration to the entire EU—which is considered a double punishment.
Priya, a Surinamese woman who has been back in Suriname for three years, is a case in point. She is still
involved in many legal procedures in the Netherlands to reduce her three-year prison sentence in
cassation, as this would allow her to undo the imposition of the entry ban. She has relatively few
opportunities to fight this decision, though, as she is already far away, which complicates communication
with her lawyer. During these years, the cruel situation means that Priya is not able to see her son, who
lives in the Netherlands, as she is not allowed to enter the country:
Your child doesn’t forget that, like, “Ow, three years my mother wasn’t here. Three birthdays
that my mum didn’t attend. Three mothers’ days.” Can you give that back to me? Can you give
that back to my child? No! you cannot give that back.
Entry bans seriously limit people’s opportunities to travel legally to both the Netherlands and other EU
countries, which is why migrants consider cyclical migration within their transnational network to be a
solution to the life events or issues they are confronted with. Internal migration-control mechanisms, such
as the entry ban or the pronouncement of undesirability, have actually become part of and further added
to the external migration-control mechanisms, as they prevent migration to Europe and create immobility
in the home countries.
Further, some returned and deported respondents are confronted with civic integration requirements,
which hamper their return to the Netherlands. In 2005, the Dutch authorities introduced preadmission
integration requirements as part of its policies to ensure that only sufficiently motivated migrants who
will probably successfully integrate into Dutch society are admitted. Some of these requirements include
a sufficient income level and a test of Dutch language fluency and societal knowledge. These relatively
strict selection measures make entry rights conditional on participation in or successful completion of the
programs (Bonjour 2010). This shows that the Dutch authorities use a broad range of policies—within and
beyond migration and integration policies—to govern unwanted migration. By such means, they strictly
select who is welcome in the Netherlands and try to close the net for unwelcome others. The fieldwork in
Suriname and Nigeria illustrated that the merger of these policy domains once again hindered
respondents’ (re)migration to the Netherlands. Chioke, a Nigerian who was deported four years earlier
and whose wife and son were still legally residing in the Netherlands, is one such case. During each phone
conversation, Chioke’s son asked him when he would return to the Netherlands, which his father would
love to do; however, this was still impossible given his wife’s lack of sufficient income. He worked the entire
time during his (unauthorized) stay in the Netherlands and was able to support his family, but now he is
stuck in Nigeria until he is able to meet the preadmission requirements. Chioke continues to look for a way
to circumvent these requirements. He believes that it is hard that the Dutch authorities tear families apart
with these measures. Other respondents and their family members were looking for partners, jobs, and
other resources to facilitate their legal migration to either the Netherlands or another European country,
as they preferred legal migration over clandestine routes and living unauthorized in the Netherlands
(again).
Conclusions
In this contribution, we started by sketching the context of a globalizing world in which opposing
processes—increased restrictive and selective bordering practices and the increased mobility of bona fide
travelers and crimmigrants within transnational networks—go side by side. It is in this context of
increased mobility, cyclical migration, transnational networks, and increased migration control that we
focused our attention on the interaction between unauthorized migrants and Dutch internal migration-
control mechanisms. We wondered how these interactions shaped the daily lives of unauthorized migrants
in the Netherlands, as well as their mobility during their unauthorized stay, post-return, or deportation.
We conclude that the so-called internal migration-control mechanisms seriously contribute to the
“deportability” of unauthorized migrants, defined as their omnipresent awareness of the possibility of
being deported from the “space of the nation-state.” This deportability has serious legal, social, and
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existential effects on these migrants, which are felt long after their return or deportation, even for those
respondents who returned to their home country using financial return assistance (Staring and Kox 2020).
This study shows how the multilayered structure of the divergent Dutch control mechanisms is being
perceived by those subjected to it—that is, as “one system of control.” The analysis of the migrants’ stories
gives meaning to three important, interlinked layers within the system: the divergent actors, a broad range
of laws and policies not restricted to migration policies, and different localities. First, the migrants discern
a whole range of public and private actors who are involved within this system of internal migration
control, including (immigration) police, immigration officers, officers from the Immigration and
Naturalisation Service, officers from the DT&V, border officers, employers, acquaintances, citizens,
lawyers, flight captains, landlords, and IOM employees. A second input to the layered structure of the
internal migration control is presented by the divergent laws and policies that all try to control the mobility
of the unauthorized migrants in the Netherlands and which, as such, also add to the encompassing control
system: criminal laws, development aid, civic integration requirements, labor laws, housing laws, and
social rights. We show how these layers are interlinked, as the merger of these policy domains with the
migration domain also implies an extension of the controlling actors with whom unauthorized migrants
are confronted from the moment that they choose to migrate until their post-return or deportation. Third,
we conclude that specific internal migration-control mechanisms dealing with entry bans and
deportations have severe consequences that go far beyond internal migration controls, with their national
policy goals of withstanding unauthorized stay. As a consequence, migrants returned or deported to their
home country often experience immobility, economic or social exclusion, as well as traumas related to
their separated families. As we have shown, the individual nation-state, through its internal migration
management, adds directly to the externalization of migration control at a supranational level. These
insights, based on the migrants’ experiences, reveal that multilayered bordering regimes have an even
wider reach than is usually assumed in the theoretical debate on this topic and that the interlinkage of
these layers strengthens its effects.
Nation-states attempt to govern through migration controls (Bosworth and Guild 2008) and create a
comprehensive multilayered system to do so. However, this contribution also shows that unauthorized
migrants try to deal with the nation-state’s intended policy goals. They prolong their stay in the
Netherlands based on ideas of safety first, instead of answering their marginalized and criminalized
position by returning home. The migrants’ narratives simultaneously illustrate the self-evident character
of mobility in their lives. Once people have migrated, this generates movement in different directions, even
after return or deportation (cf. Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013). The effects of internal migration-control
mechanisms here and there raise serious external barriers to this self-evident nature of international
cyclical migration. It challenges the creativity of migrants’ agency in resisting these bordering practices, as
it also fuels criminal networks facilitating irregular border crossings (Snel, Bilgili, and Staring 2020).
Finally, let us end by quoting Ibo again, from the Ivory Coast, with whom we started and who presented us
with the title of this article.
I call it a system. It is a system. Sometimes I laugh when I see these young people who come
here and who see the system. The legalization opportunities give them hope that there are
some good things ahead of them but these are not there. It is empty, empty hope.
Ibo, who could be labeled as a hands-on expert in migration control due to his long-lasting experience of
living unauthorized in the Netherlands, is far from optimistic about the direction that migration
management takes. He realizes the comprehensive and devastating effects of migration control on his daily
life long after returning home.
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IJCJSD 10(3) 2021Mieke Kox, Richard Staring: Unauthorized Migrants’ Understandings of the Long Reach of Dutch Internal Migration Controls
Acknowledgements
The fieldwork abroad was supported by personal grants for MH Kox offered by the TalentFund of the
Erasmus School of Law (2016–2017) and the Erasmus Trustfonds.
We would like to thank Maartje van der Woude, our colleagues participating in this special issue, and the
two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on a draft of this paper.
Correspondence:
M.H. (Mieke) Kox, PhD candidate at the Criminology department of the Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, Netherlands. Kox@law.eur.nl
Professor Richard Staring, Empirical Criminology at Department of Criminology, Erasmus University
Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, Netherlands. Staring@law.eur.nl
1 This section is based on previous papers from the PhD research by MH Kox (Kox, Boone, and Staring 2020; Kox and Staring
2020).
2 The effects of these Dutch internal controls on the migrants’ working, housing, and health conditions have repeatedly been
discussed (e.g., Burgers and Engbersen 1999; Hintjens, Siegmann, and Staring 2020; Staring and Aarts 2010), so they are not
discussed here.
3 During fieldwork, the DT&V implemented a new method aimed at motivation treatment
https://www.dienstterugkeerenvertrek.nl/documenten/publicaties/2019/07/26/werken-in-gedwongen-kader
4 The authorities also use EU charter flights https://frontex.europa.eu/media-centre/multimedia/videos/return-operations-
Bbo2NH
5 The Dublin Regulation (EU Regulation No. 604/2013) arranges which member-state is responsible for asylum applications.
Usually, this is the country in which the migrants first entered EU territory and where their fingerprints are registered.
6 See also the contribution of Schulz (this issue) on “social suffering.”
7 An entry ban is an administrative measure that prohibits migrants, for a preset time, from returning to EU countries. The
pronouncement of undesirability also aims to ban unauthorized migrants but is mainly used after a criminal conviction. See
also https://ind.nl/en/Pages/entry-ban-return-decision-and-pronouncement-of-undesirability.aspx
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